The Greatest Asset of Your Business

If there is one thing I have learned in business, it’s that you simply cannot accomplish anything by yourself. Trying to build a business in any way is going to be much harder; taken longer; cost more in time, effort, energy and money than you would have ever thought. Accelerating any of these or even achieving what you have set out to do is not going to be possible alone.

One of the greatest business builders and leverage points for growth will always be your people. There are lots of fancy technologies and systems that create leverage but at the end of the day, the quality, commitment, skill and responsibility of your people will either make you or break you.

You really don’t have a business if you do not have a support system of people around you, helping you in some way. If everything is dependent on you, if you are wearing all the hats (or too many hats), your growth will be stymied.

Now, I didn’t say you had to employee these people or they all had to work for you. Having a support system goes far beyond just your internal team.

For today, that’s what we are going to talk about; how to develop people and the fastest ways to get your team, staff, employees involved in the most important and impactful leverage points of growth for your business.

To begin, it’s imperative you understand and embrace the perspective that every single person affects the growth of your business, impacts the customer experience, and either increases revenue or decreases opportunity.

There are no neutral people.

From the stock person to the executive, everyone has a role that enhances your business or detracts from it.

I have never seen any dollar in a business as an ‘expense’ except for the purpose of which column it goes in on your tax returns. There is no ‘expense’ in business – every single dollar is an investment, or if it is not, then it should be eliminated.

You really can’t have expenses in business. They just don’t exist.

Your greatest investment will always be in your people because they have the ability to take your business growth to new levels of leverage.

Before we talk about the leverage points, let’s talk about the People.

There are 7 critical areas of development that every person must understand in order to become effective…

Culture – you have to begin right here before you go anywhere else. The best companies on the planet with the most raving fans as customers, clients, and patients have the most raving fan employees – that is because they embrace, believe in, and are loyal to the culture.

You don’t just sign up for culture, it has to be ingrained, instilled, bought into.

Communication – I would say this is the most missed one in all organizations but then again pretty much all 7 of these are overlooked and underestimated.

You must have a communication structure, systems and expectations. If your business isn’t built on a platform and foundation of communication, then it will at some point be your undoing. Lack of communication will destroy your ability to grow and to keep great people.

Cashflow – every person in your organization must know how money moves, what actions relate to cash flowing through the business and most importantly the impact they have on it. Taking care of money is everyone’s responsibility.

Training – well this is the obvious one…most do it to some extent, no one does it enough, I will make this very simple: you can’t expect things from people they have not been trained to do.

The biggest mistake businesses make with people is trying to make them something they are not. Your goal should always be to align with people’s strengths and train them to be the best they can be; not train them to be something or do something they don’t want to or can’t.

Empowerment – I love empowerment. I believe it’s the secret sauce to human potential. Empowerment means you give people responsibility. You give them a chance to succeed and to fail. That’s truly the only way they learn.

If you want to drive up your overhead in your business and have little profit to show for it, then just make sure you plateau all of your people’s abilities and potential by pigeon holing them into a role instead of giving them opportunity to grow and improve and live up to their potential.

Empowerment also means no babysitting required. Anyone who has to be checked on doesn’t belong. Sure, you have checks and balances to account for human error but you empower people so they have ownership over their own position, job, and responsibilities and then you can begin achieving true leverage in your enterprise.

Accountability – performance based accountability…this is what most people miss…they pay for time spent, maybe work done, but seldom for results. Everyone should be tied to results.

Remember you are investing money into your people, that money is no different than buying a piece of equipment, real estate or anything else, it comes with expectations of outcomes and a return on that investment.

Hold people accountable. The best ones will want to be and you can’t call yourself a businessperson if you are not making sure every person is being maximized and every person’s actions accounted for.

Growth – we’ll get into this more next week with our leverage points. The key here in #7 is you can’t expect your people to help you grow the company if they don’t understand how to and more importantly how they fit in to it.

People, just like you, need clarity of purpose and of priorities. Achieving growth through your people is essential and the entire point but if they don’t understand what growth looks like or how to create it, contribute to it, and sustain it they will disappoint you without even knowing it.

Once you have every person tied to growth in some way shape or form, then you will begin to experience the multiplier effect of the best asset and the greatest leverage your business will ever have – it’s people.

Go back through these 7 and assess your performance on them and what you are doing to deliberately ensure the success of your team, staff, employees and all people involved in your business and organization.

Commit and decide to do more, be better, and take nothing and no one for granted.

Your business will always and only be as good as the people in it – and they will only do as well as you are dedicated to helping them achieve growth – and you will as a result.